Automated and semi-automated machines have been employed for processing documents such as bulk mail. Due to the large quantity of mail received by many companies, there has long been a need for efficient sorting of incoming mail. Document sorting has become particularly important in the area of remittance processing.
Utility companies, phone companies, and credit card companies routinely receive thousands of payment envelopes from their customers on a daily basis. Typically, a customer payment envelope contains an invoice stub and some type of customer payment, usually in the form of a bank check or money order.
Frequently, the envelopes received in the incoming mail have varying characteristics. For instance, the height, length and thickness of the envelopes may vary. In addition, the opacity of the envelopes may vary significantly due to the differences between standard envelopes and privacy envelopes commonly used for financial documents.
In accordance with the present invention, an apparatus and method are provided for processing mail that can accommodate a batch of mail containing envelopes having different characteristics.